Dan Tudor

by Mandy Green, University of South Dakota

How long do you and your staff spend each day on unimportant things?  Things that don’t really contribute to the success of your program.

Do you know how much time you’ve spent reading junk mail, talking to colleagues, getting interrupted by somebody walking into your office, or getting phone calls everyday? And how often have you thought, “I could achieve so much more if I just had another half hour each day.”

In working closely with the team at Tudor Collegiate Strategies, I know we continually hear from coaches who struggle with their day.  They lament how often time seems to get away from them.  Even when they plan their upcoming calendar as a coaching staff, it seems to never quite unfold the way coaches hope.

First thing I want you to do: Identify the high-payoff activities within your program.

High-payoff activities are the things you do that bring the greatest value to your program, team, or staff.  They are the three to five activities that lie in your “sweet spot.”  You do them with excellence.  These activities could be building relationships with recruits, making phone calls to parents, sending emails to recruits, managing your current team, etc.  They are your unique discipline or distinctive skills and abilities that distinguish you from other staff members.

Knowing what your high-payoff activities are and actually doing them, however, are two very different things.  Many surveys that I have read over the past several years have shown that the average American worker spends only 50-60 percent of the workday on activities specified in her or her job description.  That means that workers waste 40-50 percent of their time on low-payoff activities, tackling things that others with less skill or training should be doing.

Are you in this category coach?

The more time you spend doing the high-payoff activities, the more value you will bring to your team, program, and staff.  By disciplining yourself to clearly identify your high-payoff activities, and then by filling your calendar with those things and appropriately delegating, delaying, or dropping the low-payoff activities, you can and will get more high-payoff activities done everyday, reduce your stress, and increase your happiness.

Homework-Time tracking in an Activity Log

Activity logs help you to analyze how you actually spend your time, and when you perform at your best. The first time you use an activity log the results may shock you! I know that I was shocked the first time I did one.

Do this activity for a week. Write down everything you do, from the time you start working until the time you go home. Without modifying your behavior any further than you have to, note down the things you do as you do them.  I created a sample template below.  You will need to cut and paste and make the template the size you need it to be depending on the amount of things you do everyday.

Every time you change activities, whether opening mail, working, making coffee, gossiping with colleagues or whatever, note down the time of the change.
As well as recording activities, note how you feel, whether alert, flat, tired, energetic, etc. Do this periodically throughout the day.

At the end of every time-tracked day, tally the total hours you spent in high- vs low-payoff activities.  Although this may seem like a hassle, it’s vitally important for you to become very clear on how you actually spend your time over the course of the week.  You may be alarmed to see the amount of time you spend doing low value jobs!

Activity logs are useful tools for auditing the way that you use your time. They can also help you to track changes in your energy, alertness and effectiveness throughout the day.

By analyzing your activity log you will be able to identify and eliminate time-wasting or low-value jobs. You will also know the times of day at which you are most effective, so that you can carry out your most important tasks during these times.

Soon you’ll gain a clear picture of how you’re actually spending your time and whether you have room to fill your calendar with the activities that will truly add the most value to you and your program.

Mandy Green, a frequent contributor to College Recruiting Weekly, is a Division I head soccer coach and the author of an upcoming time-management guide for college coaches, as well as a corresponding calendar organizer.  In addition, she will be a featured speaker at the upcoming National Collegiate Recruiting Conference this Summer.

by Mandy Green, Head Soccer Coach – University of South Dakota

How long do you spend each day on unimportant things?

Things that don’t really contribute to the success of your program?

Do you KNOW how much time you’ve spent reading junk mail, talking to colleagues, getting interrupted by somebody walking into your office, or getting phone calls everyday? And how often have you thought, “I could achieve so much more if I just had another half hour each day.”

In my years of being associated with Tudor Collegiate Strategies, I know they continually hear from smart, capable college coaches who struggle with their day.  They lament how often time seems to get away from them.

As the first step towards fixing that problem, the first thing I would want you to do is identify the high-payoff activities within your program.

High-payoff activities are the things you do that bring the greatest value to your program, team, or staff.  They are the three to five activities that lie in your “sweet spot.”  You do them with excellence.

These activities could be building relationships with recruits, making phone calls to parents, sending emails to recruits, managing your current team, and other essential success-oriented activities.  They are your unique discipline or distinctive skills and abilities that distinguish you from other staff members.

Knowing what your high-payoff activities are and actually doing them, however, are two very different things.  Many surveys that I have read over the past several years have shown that the average American worker spends only 50-60 percent of the workday on activities specified in her or her job description.  That means that workers waste 40-50 percent of their time on low-payoff activities, tackling things that others with less skill or training should be doing.

Are you in this category coach?

The more time you spend doing the high-payoff activities, the more value you will bring to your team, program, and staff.  By disciplining yourself to clearly identify your high-payoff activities, and then by filling your calendar with those things and appropriately delegating, delaying, or dropping the low-payoff activities, you can and will get more high-payoff activities done everyday, reduce your stress, and increase your happiness.

Your Homework Assignment -Time Tracking in an Activity Log

Activity logs help you to analyze how you actually spend your time, and when you perform at your best. The first time you use an activity log the results may shock you! I know that I was shocked the first time I did one.

Do this for a week:  Write down everything you do, from the time you start working until the time you go home. Without modifying your behavior any further than you have to, note down the things you do as you do them.

Every time you change activities, whether opening mail, working, making coffee, gossiping with colleagues or whatever, note down the time of the change.
As well as recording activities, note how you feel…are you alert, flat, tired, energetic, or frustrated?  Do this periodically throughout the day.

At the end of every time-tracked day, tally the total hours you spent in high payoff vs. low payoff activities.  Although this may seem like a hassle, it’s vitally important for you to become very clear on how you actually spend your time over the course of the week.  You may be alarmed to see the amount of time you spend doing low value jobs!

By analyzing your activity log you will be able to identify and eliminate time-wasting or low-value jobs. You will also know the times of day at which you are most effective, so that you can carry out your most important tasks during these times.

Soon you’ll gain a clear picture of how you’re actually spending your time and whether you have room to fill your calendar with the activities that will truly add the most value to you and your program.

Mandy Green is a Division I soccer coach at the University of South Dakota, and is a frequent contributor to College Recruiting Weekly on the topics of organization and time management for college coaches.  She is a regular speaker at the National Collegiate Recruiting Conference, and is the author of a soon to be released time management guide for college coaches.

by Mandy Green, University of South Dakota

Coach, have you ever sat down and really analyzed how effective and efficient you are being with your day?  Which task do you choose to focus on?  Is one more important to you than the other?

In his book, The On-Purpose Person, author Kevin McCarthy describes the difference between efficiency and effectiveness. “Efficiency is doing things right in the most economical way possible; effectiveness is doing the right things that get you closer to your goals.”

It seems to me that being efficient without regard to effectiveness is the default mode of the universe. What you do is infinitely more important than how you do it.   Now, being efficient is still important, but we all know that it is useless unless applied to the right things.

There are two ways for you to increase productivity that are inversions of each other:

1. Limit daily tasks just to the important to shorten your work time (80/20).
2. Shorten work time to limit your tasks so you only focus on the important (Parkinson’s Law)

Pareto’s 80/20 Law can be summarized as follows: 20 percent of your priorities will give you 80 percent of your production.

Ask yourself these two questions about your program, your team, and your staff:

–Which 20% of sources are resulting in 80% of my desired outcomes and happiness?
–Which 20% of sources are causing 80% of my problems and unhappiness?

Once you have identified your top 20%, commit to scheduling those activities into your day, everyday.  Then, go the next step further by putting a time restriction on how long you will give yourself to complete each high-priority activity.

Timothy Ferriss, in his book The 4-Hour Workweek, introduces a concept called Parkinson’s Law.  Parkinson’s Law dictates that a task will swell in perceived importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion.

The best solution is to use 80/20 and Parkinson’s Law together:  Identify the few critical high-payoff tasks that contribute most to effectiveness and efficiency within your program and then schedule each activity with very short and clear deadlines.

Coach, it is critical to the success of your program that you know what your high-priority activities are and are incorporating those high-payoff activities into your schedule consistently every single day.  Once identified, set an aggressive deadline for each task and block off certain sections of your day where you focus on nothing but that task to ensure completion.

If you haven’t identified your high-priority tasks and are not setting aggressive start and end times for their completion, the unimportant emails, phone calls, and people popping their head into your office becomes the important.  These unimportant things can and will eat up a good chunk of your day if you continue to let them.

Mandy Green is a Division I head soccer coach at the University of South Dakota, and a frequent contributor to College Recruiting Weekly.  She will be a featured speaker at the 2012 National Collegiate Recruiting Conference in Boston, this coming June 1-3, 2012.  You can register now to hear Coach Green and a host of other nationally recognized recruiting experts and save big on the conference fee, as well as hotel rooms.  Click here for all the details!

by Mandy Green, Head Soccer Coach – University of South Dakota

One of the biggest hurdles that coaches seem to be facing is finding enough time to do everything they need to do when it comes to recruiting.

Running a program means you have a lot on your plate and it is really tough to stay on top of everything, especially recruiting.

Most of the coaches we work with during an On-Campus Workshop feel
overwhelmed. These coaches come to Tudor Collegiate Strategies – as I originally did as a college coach - hoping to learn some tricks that will create time for them to do more recruiting and still get all of the other things done that they need to
do.

I consistently hear from fellow coaches that they go into their day with a game plan and by 9:30 A.M. their day has gotten thoroughly messed up because of a crisis, a colleague stopped by, emails, unexpected phone calls, etc.  Many of these same coaches stay relatively messed up the remainder of the day. So many times we get caught up in being “busy” during our day and before we know what hit us, the day is over and we still have recruiting phone calls to make and emails to send out.

Here are four ways you can make more time for recruiting, without adding more hours to your already hectic workday:

1.  Schedule recruiting into your day. Most coaches haven’t established recruiting, and all the little details that are a part of it, as a top priority in their day.  They let interruptions, distractions, unimportant conversations and unwanted visitors eat up their time.  Don’t let that happen to you.  Recruiting student athletes that will make your program better is crucial to your success as a coach and should be scheduled into your day every day. Turn off your phone, close your email, and shut your door.    Block off a half-hour, an hour, or
however much time you feel is going to be necessary to accomplish what you
need to get done where you focus on nothing but recruiting.

2.  Do your recruiting first thing in the morning or when your energy is highest. Whether its e-mails to send, letters to write, or making arrangements for an upcoming prospect campus visit, get it done right when you
walk into the office.  Plenty of fires flare-up as the day progresses and it seems like the first thing to get shoved aside is recruiting.  Get your recruiting tasks done first thing in the morning, when you have the fewest interruptions, and your mind is fresh.   If you are not a morning person, plan to do your recruiting for the day at a time when you know that you will have good energy.

3.  Make a list the night before and prioritize it. Start your recruiting day the night before by making a list of the top five or ten things you plan to accomplish in your recruiting duties for the upcoming day.  Once you have your list, prioritize it.  When you get into the office the next morning, work off your list in order of importance.  Writing down the things you know you need to do will let you sleep more soundly, and give you a clear direction the next morning when your day starts.

4.  Set small daily recruiting goals for yourself. Maybe you set the goal of
calling three recruits a night.  Or, maybe its to hand write five prospects by the end of the day. Whatever it is, set your goals and then post them in front of you so that you make sure you accomplish them.  Measure your success in recruiting effectiveness in the same way you would analyze your team’s statistics as a way of measuring their performance.

Easy to do?  Surprisingly, no.

Most coaches will look at the list and kind of roll their eyes because its all just common sense, much of which they’ve heard before.  And yet, those same coaches will let their valuable work day slip away because they haven’t made it a priority to keep focused on what it is that they need to do to be successful recruiters.

Are you struggling to find time to get your recruiting done in a more efficient manner?  Does the thought of not stressing-out to sign more quality recruits sound appealing?  Want more time away from the coaching office to spend with your spouse and kids?  It’s all there waiting for you, coach.  But first, you need to get serious about using the time you already have to do your recruiting.

Mandy Green, head coach at the University of South Dakota and veteran recruiting and organizational expert, is one of the many experts getting ready to teach coaches from around the country at the 2011 National Collegiate Recruiting Conference in Nashville.  The deadline for registering for this year’s conference is approaching fast!  Register today!